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"But even if it's true," said Florimel, "even if the operating system is trying to make everything into a little story, the operating system isn't in charge anymore. As far as we know, whatever small independence it had under the Grail people is gone—it has been completely subverted by that murdering swine, Dread." She lifted her hand to her face. "Look at this! I have lost an ear and an eye—even if I survive to return to the real world, I might be half-blind, half-deaf. Even worse, this killer may have insured that there is no cure for my daughter. So it is meaningless to sit here talking about story this and story that. Where is Dread? How do we get to him? Where were we, in that place where the Other manifested itself? You are a landlord in this virtual universe, Kunohara. You must be able to find things out, travel, communicate." She took a deep, ragged breath; when she spoke again, her voice was quieter but no less harsh. "We asked you once before if you meant to help us, and you said you were too afraid of the Brotherhood—you would not risk your life. Well, your life is truly in danger now. So will you help us?"
What seemed to Paul like a very long time passed. A dull glow had kindled behind the mists outside: the sun was rising over Kunohara's imaginary world, although it was still hidden in fog.
"You overestimate me," Kunohara said at last. "My control of my own system is very small now—any abilities I had to manipulate the larger Grail system infrastructure disappeared a day ago, probably at the time the Other was subjugated by our mutual enemy. I still do not know what powers I have left in my own world, but I have certainly lost most of my oversight capabilities. I also ca
"So what are we to do, then?" Florimel asked, but her voice had lost its edge. "Simply give up? Sit here drinking tea and wait to die?"
"We must understand the system. Without understanding, we are indeed doomed. The Other has created, or at least influenced, the structure of the entire network, and even if this man Dread has somehow taken control over the system, the patterns must remain."
"And what patterns are those?" Martine asked. She had not spoken in a while. She seemed distracted, and tilted her head as though she listened to something the rest of them could not hear.
Kunohara drained his drink and stood up. "Stories. A quest of sorts. And other things, too. Children and childhood. Death. Resurrection."
"And labyrinths," Paul said, remembering. "I thought of that back on Ithaca. Many of the control points, the gateways, things like that—they center around mazes or places having to do with death. But I thought that was just the Brotherhood's sense of humor."
"It could be, in part," Kunohara said. "Or even a more practical reason. Because of the risk of getting lost, they are often places that people will avoid, which gives the Grail users greater privacy. But I have seen enough of the various worlds to think that too many repetitions of themes might also mean that the operating system has weighted things in that direction—that these are signs of an emergent order, if you will." He seemed quite involved and excited now, almost feverish. "In the House world, for instance, where I met most of you again. I knew its builders, and much of the artistry of the place was theirs, but the Lady of the Windows? Who also seems a manifestation of your own guardian angel, Jonas? I ca
Paul thought he heard now what had caught Martine's attention, a low throbbing hum, barely distinguishable above the murmur of the river. But something else now seemed foremost in Martine's mind. She sat up straighter. "That's right," she said. "You knew we had been summoned there, didn't you? When they met you in the House, Florimel said there was no maze in Troy, but you knew otherwise."
Kunohara nodded, but looked wary. "As I said, it was one of the first simulations the Brotherhood constructed." He frowned. "But how do you know what we said? You were still a prisoner. You were not there."
"Exactly." Martine's face was hard. "It is always strange when people know things who were not present to see them. And you know much about our time in Troy. Paul, did you tell Mr. Kunohara that we were in the Temple of Demeter?"
Martine's open enmity toward their host had been making him uncomfortable, and he was about to say something to set the conversation back on the right track when he realized she had a point. "Not . . . not specifically. I skipped over a lot . . . because I was in a hurry to tell him what happened to the Grail Brotherhood." He felt as though he had suddenly been set adrift once more, his destiny in the hands of others. He turned to Kunohara. "How did you know?"
It was hard to tell exactly what the man's exasperation signified: he was hard to read at the best of times. "Where else could it have been? I practically sent you there myself!"
T4b sat up straight, balling his fists. "Workin' for those Grail people, him? After all, he dupping us?"
"He could be telling the truth," Martine said, raising her hand to calm T4b. "But I wonder. I think perhaps you are not telling us all the truth, Mr. Kunohara." She blinked, distracted for a moment, but did her best to finish her thought. "You did know where we were going, as you said. I suspect that you also had an informant there in Troy and beyond—perhaps even one of our number, although that is an unpleasant thought—and that it was the communication link between you and that informant which I was able to follow back here when everything came apart on the mountain top."
The moment of tension between the two of them, which made the whole room feel hot and close, did not last. Just when it seemed Kunohara must either admit his guilt or launch an angry rebuttal, Martine jerked her head back, staring sightlessly toward the arc of the ceiling and the blanket of gray mist that obscured everything. The humming was now too loud to ignore.
"There are many shapes above us," she said, her voice twisted by surprise. "Many. . . ."
Something thumped heavily on the uppermost curve of the bubble, a dark blotch that made the mists outside swirl. Jointed legs flailed, scrabbling as though they sought to dig through the transparent surface. There were more noises of impact, a few at first, then dozens in rapid succession. Paul tried to scramble to his feet, but the urge to flight was already arrested: slow squirming shapes were all over the bubble and more were landing every moment. Kunohara clapped his hands once and the lights inside the bubble grew bright, so that for the first time they could see the things pressed against the curving roof.
By the shape of the bodies, the long armored abdomens and the blur of beating wings just above their shiny thoraxes, they might have been wasps—but if so, something had gone very wrong. Like the mutated wood lice, there seemed no limit to how many legs they had or how those limbs were arranged. As they crowded in ever-increasing numbers across the bubble, they pressed semihuman faces against the surface, distorted features stretching and squeezing even more alarmingly as they tried to force their way through the barrier.
T4b sprang up, looking for somewhere to retreat, but the wasps covered almost every centimeter of the glassy walls, the foggy sky now replaced with a firmament of plated limbs and drooling, mandibled mouths.